Erin Patterson, the Australian woman sentenced to life for the mushroom murders, has formally filed an appeal against the guilty verdicts.
The middle-aged woman was found guilty of killing three family members and attempting to murder another with a poisonous fungal dish at her home in Victoria state in that year.
Per the nation's legal system, challenging verdicts isn't guaranteed, and her defense lawyers had to convince the Court of Appeal that there could have been procedural faults in the legal process.
Patterson's petition was filed on the start of the week, following the court granting her legal representatives approval to contest the convictions.
The grounds of the appeal remain undisclosed.
Asserting Non-Guilt
During the eleven-week court case, Patterson consistently declared her innocence, claiming that the incident was a terrible accident, and she didn't deliberately add toxic mushrooms in the beef Wellington meal she cooked and served for the midday meal.
Her husband's parents the Patterson couple, each seventy years old, and Gail's sister Heather Wilkinson, sixty-six, passed away following the dish.
The husband Ian Wilkinson, a clergyman, pulled through following recovery from a comatose state, and still has ongoing physical complications associated with the poisoning.
Verdict
Following a week of discussions, the panel of 12 jurors announced their collective finding - responsible for all accusations.
She was given a record-long incarceration periods imposed on a female offender in Australia - imprisonment for life, with no chance of release for at least 33 years.
That means Patterson will be in her elderly years when she might request release.
Judicial Review
Now she will have the opportunity to contest the court's verdict.
The four-week period to lodge an appeal ended on October 6th, however a new procedural rule, giving legal teams an extension without needing to explain why, gave her lawyers more time to lodge the paperwork.
Case Background
Considerable public fascination in the deadly mushroom matter, and extensive media coverage swirled around the modest courthouse in the provincial area of that location while the case was heard.
During nine weeks of evidence, the jury heard evidence implying Patterson had foraged death cap mushrooms in local communities and drew in the individuals to the lethal dinner with deceptive claims that she suffered from cancer - before trying to conceal the offenses by lying to police and destroying proof.
Her estranged husband, Patterson, was also asked to the meal but cancelled at the last minute, in part due to his belief that his wife had been trying to poison him over a long period.
Previous Incidents
Following the trial, it was revealed that he had been so violently ill post ingestion of multiple dishes she prepared earlier that he fell into a coma, a large part of his bowel had been surgically removed, and his family had been told to say goodbye to him twice as his recovery was considered unlikely.
Current Situation
Patterson is currently in a all-female penitentiary - the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre in that urban area.
When the sentence was delivered, the presiding judge informed the court she passes 22 hours a day in her confinement space, with no communication with other inmates due to her "major offender status".
The justice observed that her public image and the extensive attention in the case indicated she would probably "stay as a well-known convict going forward, and, as such, stay vulnerable from fellow inmates".
